Panacea: Plan P

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be
overcome. — Samuel Johnson

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then
you win. — Mahatma Gandhi (attributed).

A Growth Policy which will work is simplicity itself.

Remember and recommend this, and repeat what it says to your friends.

This is the much called for growth Plan B, which should have been Plan A for
growth from the start.

Audacious Growth Policy

for Right Wing Nutters & Hippy Lefties

Look after Growth, and the debt and the deficit will look after themselves.

Imagine the whole of the financial sector loaded, aimed, then fired at the
real economy. All that wealth, our wealth, the wealth of the nation, tied up
by banker-mathematicians in Gordian bundles, trying to rip each other off. All that.
Fired at good businesses in need of honestly priced finance.

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and
making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually
die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. — Max Planck

Growth is the panacea, no matter what you are trying to achieve
politically, it will work better with Growth; if you have full employment.

I've espoused and proselytised it, but most people, intelligent or not, seem
to react as if from a post-hypnotic suggestion; "that'll never work",
but they can never articulate why not.

So how do we get the whole of the financial sector loaded, lined up and fired
at the real economy?
We "incentivise" the most influential people in the financial sector to move
capital away from impossible to predict, emergent behaviour, "financial products" to
investment in the real economy.

Think about tax and regulation. Then think about performance related pay.
Think about bankers pay being related to the performance of the UK economy.

Remember we want Growth.
This is how you do it.

Plan P

The 'Drive' is the unemployment rate, the induced vertical movement is bankers
top-rate income tax.

Dynamically link bankers top-rate of income tax to the unemployment
level.
This Engine Governor image shows the classic feedback mechanism we need to
apply to the banking system.

This will force the Quantitative Easing and Funding for Lending money, which the banks are using to
boost their own profits and bonuses (with the government standing by doing
nothing about it) out into the real economy; namely SMEs.

If I say so myself, and I do, but I'm not the only one, this is a stroke
of genius!

Bankers will object, but if you are a "real" businessman
or entrepreneur, you SHOULD see that this will divert
much working capital in your direction — you know you could use it to good
effect.

Link Bank Levy to Cost of Jobseekers

Let's say bankers top-rate of income tax is dynamically set at ten times the
percentage unemployment level.
This would have seen it around the 80% mark for the first
half of 2012.
Before the bankers melted the globe, this would have been about a 50% top-level
of income tax.
Strictly speaking this is offering them more money, we're just resetting the
base level from which "more" is measured.

If I say so myself, and I do, but I'm not the only one, this is a stroke of genius!

Underemployment

Professors David
Bell and David
Blanchflower of the University of Stirling and Dartmouth College have
created a new
index which combines both unemployment and underemployment; the extra
hours workers would work if given the chance. It also accounts for overemployment,
those thinking of retirement and slowing down a little.
This index, using data from the UK
Labour Force Survey, measured 9.9% in the middle of 2012, so if we were
to use that, bankers would have their top-tier income taxed at 99%!

Incentivise Institutions

This only incentivises the individuals. How do we incentivise the institutions,
get them singing from the same hymn sheet — without catching on fire?
Dead easy!
Scrap the bank levy (don't get excited Pinstripe), and replace it with a simple
presentation of the cost of Jobseekers allowance — about £6 billion per
year.

The problem with this is that it is VERY local, the Euro problems will decrease
exports to the EC, and will also damp down the global economy, further reducing
export pathways. Hence we need a strong internal market. So the problem of
localism actually becomes a strength.

No Buggering About

The Government is left out of the nitty gritty details, no buggering about
with the type of negotiations seen in the failed, and
now defunct Project Merlin, or dishonest protestations by the British Bankers
Association that targets are being met, no need for Funding
for Lending, which has also failed. There are no targets, just a feedback
relationship between the performance of the economy and the taxes on banking:
simply set the income tax and levy as I've described, then tell the bankers
to sod off and get on with it. No argument.

Zero Incentive

If the bankers get the economy to full employment their top-rate tax will
be near zero percent. How's that for an incentive we can tell the bankers they'll
be getting?
Tell them that ...

Imagine we had shown the bankers a projection like this in 2008, do you
think the economy would be anywhere near as bad now?

Email Your Member of Parliament

Contact your MP and he is duty bound
to reply to you, and to ask questions of ministers or departments.

Show them this graph right now, tell your Member of Parliament — don't ask,
demand — your MP has an absolute duty to put questions to ministers, and ministers
are duty bound to answer.
Use the link to find your MP's email etc, and send them a message.

Result

Osborne and Cameron chillax, really do sit back, complacently, with their
feet up, watching investment soar, unemployment plummet and a landslide at
the next general election. Or whoever pushes this policy through. Plotting
— I mean New Coalition — between LibDems and New Labour?

Nobel Prize in Economics for me? I should bloody think so.
:)

Zeitgeist

The only way these things are going to happen is if they become the Zeitgeist,
the more people that start to contemplate these ideas, the more chance they
have of becoming policy — eventually.

The coalition government will not do these things, but when it becomes clear
that there are MASSIVE cuts required, these ideas in the wind will hopefully
catch on as an alternative to mass unemployment, or a lost decade.

Note

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point
is to discover them. — Galileo Galilei

I think Galileo must be wrong. I estimate only 1% of people I've spoken to
or contacted grasp the true significance of this idea. If you get it, it will
seem astoundingly obvious to you, and you will struggle to understand why almost
none of your friends can see the merits of it. You will have to explain it
to them very slowly, and try to engage their support, because the only way
this is going to happen is if there is a mass movement for it — we need everyone.